Annual health exams are a tradition among healthcare-having Americans, but whether they’re necessary is up for debate. Years ago, I asked my doctor for a checkup and he chuckled, pointing out that I seemed fine. So, is this annual tradition really a necessity? It boils down to three simple questions.

Seeing a doctor is obviously a pretty personal affair, so there’s no easy way to make a guideline that works for everyone. If you have pre-existing conditions or already visit your doctor regularly, continue doing what you’re doing. We’re going to look at what the subset of people who are generally healthy and
haven’t
seen a doctor recently should do. That means no major prior illnesses, no obvious health ailments, or anything other obvious health visits. We’re also sticking to regular old primary care physicians here, so specialized care, including OB-GYNs, are something you’ll want to talk with your doctor about for a specific recommendation.

Otherwise, you can ask yourself three questions. If you answer “no” to any of these, it’s time to book your first appointment. I spoke with primary care physician Dr. Dan Weiswasser to get to the heart of these questions.

Have I Been Seen in My Doctor Office Before?

If you’ve moved to a new city or changed insurance providers, then you probably have to pick a new general practitioner. Regardless of your age, this is a good time to make an appointment for a wellness exam. This exam provides the baseline for any potential future problems.

As the name suggests, wellness exams are all about prevention and typically incorporate a few very simple tests, including: blood pressure screening, cholesterol screening, and depending on your weight or risk factors, a diabetes screening. All told, it’s a short appointment with some tests and blood work that provide the standard for where you’re at when you’re healthy. If anything does come up, you and your doctor will come up with a checkup schedule for future exams.

The purpose of the wellness exam is to take a step back from problem-based visits and get a bigger picture of your health. This way, your doctor can not only catch potential problems you might not be aware of, but also can establish what your test results are when you’re healthy.

A big aspect of going to the doctor is preventative screenings. These screenings vary based on age, gender, personal medical issues, family medical issues, habits,
Naturalizer Haley Booties Womens Shoes AG0zwIP
. There are hundreds of tests, services, and exams out there, but thankfully Dr. Weiswasser points to a couple of apps that make the process of figuring out what you need a lot easier.

Does taxonomy hamper conservation?

Garnett and Christidis “contend that the scientific community's failure to govern taxonomy threatens the effectiveness of global efforts to halt biodiversity loss, damages the credibility of science, and is expensive to society.” We disagree.

The authors claim that species-splitting provides an incentive to trophy hunters to target small populations, affects biodiversity tallies in ways that negatively impact conservation, and results in inordinately higher funding to oversplit taxonomic groups; but they provide no evidence to support these claims. If hunters target endangered species, then such societal developments should be challenged, rather than used as justification for changing the way in which science is conducted. They cite data in Evans et al. [
Bianco FRONT CROSS Sandals nougat fWHOk
] to imply that different taxonomic approaches between birds and mammals could lead to disproportionate funding relative to genetic diversity, when in fact those data (Figure 6 therein) show that the number of species in a group is not correlated with funding (e.g., fishes comprise 11% of species protected under the United States Endangered Species Act but receive 61% of government funding).

How does taxonomic instability affect conservation? Morrison et al. [
21
] “found that changes in taxonomy do not have consistent and predictable impacts on conservation”; they also found that “splitting taxa may tend to increase protection, and name changes may have the least effect where they concern charismatic organisms.” In African ungulates, Gippoliti et al. [
Gianvito Rossi Plexi leather pumps 9KLR7ax
] describe cases where conservation management based on the Biological Species Concept overlooks evolutionarily significant units (recognized with the Phylogenetic Species Concept), with negative consequences. The splitting of legally protected taxa may result in species not being included by name in conservation legislation or regulations, thereby losing legal protection. However, well-crafted legislation includes mechanisms to extend protection despite taxonomic changes; initiatives such as Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) specialist groups already link taxonomy and its changes with conservation [
JOSHUA SANDERS Fur trimmed loafers 8T3gaZhvJr
]. Garnett and Christidis assert that taxonomic instability negatively affects conservation. However, artificial stability arising from insufficient taxonomic work can be particularly detrimental to conservation, causing mistargeting of conservation funding by misrepresentation of population size and distribution with the flow-on effects to conservation status [
11
,
Farah Saint Hi Shine Derby Shoes y1wprc
,
25
].

The proposal by Garnett and Christidis for the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) to create a process that “restrict[s] the freedom of taxonomic action” is not only flawed in terms of scientific integrity (as outlined above) but is also untenable in practice. Nomenclature regulates how names are used to communicate taxonomic hypotheses and is governed by rules (Codes) to ensure the least possible degree of ambiguity in the application of names. The relationship between taxonomy and nomenclature is illustrated in
Fig 1
. These Codes have been and continue to be refined into complex and intricate legal systems (the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
consists of 90 articles with more than 600 subsections). A system that endeavors to impose similar controls over taxon concepts would likely be vastly more complex than, and in conflict with, the Codes. It is for good reason that the major Codes explicitly avoid interfering with taxonomic freedom.